This week in art – Remembered, Always!

Every week I am taking the time to discuss one of the art pieces that I, or me and my son, have created. I go through the thought process, the influences, the technique, etc. I am hoping that this post will help you better understand the origin of my art and admire all of its intricacies.

This week’s piece celebrates the second anniversary of the passing of three police officers stationed in Moncton on June 4th, 2014. The piece is called : “Remembered, Always!” and it was offered to the Moncton RCMP Office after the events that happened.

This piece came naturally to me on that night. I was following the events on CBC Canada as they were unfolding and when I learned that three police officers, Cst. Douglas James Larche, 40, from Saint John, N.B., Cst. Dave Joseph Ross, 32, from Victoriaville, Que., and Cst. Fabrice Georges Gevaudan, 45, from Boulogne-Billancourt, France, were gunned down and that 2 officers were wounded, I immediately  took my pen and started drawing. This was one of the rare moments where I knew exactly what I wanted to draw.

I started from the center of the page with a head of a horse.(Fig. 1) I chose the horse, without a rider, to represent the fallen officers. I knew that I wanted to create three of them riding across the mourning Moncton sky. To help me better position that first horse, I developed the body a little bit more. (Fig 2 & 3) Knowing the position of the first horse helped me to position the second and third horse in the drawing.

I wanted to create movement with the horse, like I said, I wanted them riding over in the sky of Moncton, so I drew the horse galloping in the sky with his mane flowing in the back. (Fig. 4)

 

ow that I had my first horse drawn, I went on and drew the second horse on the right of the initial one. It was also very important to me that the horses would not be on the same horizontal line as a flat line would’ve cancelled the dynamic of the racing horses. I started with the head of the second horse, this one I made a little lower as if he was trying to run faster than the first. (Fig. 5) Again, in this one , I defined a little bit more detail in the body but not too much as, like the first one, I wanted to use the white space as a sculpting tool in the drawing. (Fig. 6 & 7)

At that time, I took a step back to look at what I created so far and then it hit me. Where should I put the third horse? I did not leave myself a space to draw it close to it’s brothers. So for the third horse, I had to improvise and give him a step back. I went back and drew his head a little further down and retreated as if he is bracing himself to catch up to the two others. (Fig. 8) I was really happy with the way that head turned out so I created the body accordingly, also in a galloping manner. (Fig. 9)

Now there was a lot of white space over those three horses. I didn’t want to cover that area with clouds as the representation of the drawing was already too clouded by hurt, confusion and sorrow. I immediately started to draw a mourning band on top of those three horses. I added a lot of details inside the band to make it darker and also to represent the questioning, the confusion and the distraught. I drew each part in three processes the first length for the first officer (Fig. 10),  the other length for the second officer (Fig. 11) and the top part for the third officer (Fig. 12).

After I was done with the band, I went to work on the city line for Moncton. I basically used a couple of noticeable buildings from the downtown area; Assomption Building, the tower, and the Cathedral. (Fig.13)

Now that I had all of the principal elements that I wanted in the drawing, I proceeded with the representation of clouds. I wanted those clouds to look like a band in the sky, kind of like a race tracks for our three horses. I didn’t want the clouds to cover the horizon of the city line, as mentioned earlier; I wanted to show a positive message. (Fig. 14&15)

As I was drawing the clouds, I was trying to figure out the colors of the horses. I thought about white, brown, black, the usual colors of horses but then it hit me, it was right in front of me. I used the colors of the RCMP the red, blue and yellow. I used black on the mourning band to give it more accent and I colored the city line in a charcoal fade to black way to represent the mourning of a city. I used a little bit of blue to create space in between the clouds.

As for the sky, I wanted to give it an orange color as if the sun was setting on these horses, the closing of a chapter. (Fig. 16)

That day will remain in the memory of a lot of Monctonians, it was a sad day. I am and will be forever grateful for the people who put their lives on the line everyday to ensure that my family and friends live in a safe place.

Thank you, all of you! You are heroes!